With COVID exposing people around the world to the dangers of pneumonia, everyone has become concerned about lungs and ventilation. Pneumonia, by definition, is an infection in the lung. Although it’s commonly seen in humans, our furry friends are also prone to this condition. We typically see this in dogs more so than cats. Especially young dogs and brachycephalic breeds such as French Bulldogs Bulldogs, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, anything that has a squashed up face. There seems to be an overrepresentation of these breeds when we’re talking about pneumonia.
So, how do their lungs become infected? The most likely cause of pneumonia is what we would call aspiration pneumonia, which means that foreign material has been aspirated into the lungs. It’s secondary to an episode of vomiting, secondary to an episode of regurgitation or secondary to drowning or being underwater for an extended period of time.
Causes and Symptoms of Aspiration Pneumonia in Dogs
In an episode secondary to vomiting, gastric fluid and food are inhaled back into the lungs. In cases of drowning, it’s either saltwater or freshwater that gets inhaled back into the lungs. With regurgitation sometimes it is just fluid that’s been regurgitated and aspirated into the lungs.
All of these things will cause foreign material and bacteria to get into the lung field. Lungs are very delicate. They’re essentially a myriad of little tubes and little air sacs. When a patient gets pneumonia fluid and infection fill these little air sacs which stop the oxygen from reaching them. It effectively causes breathing difficulties. If oxygen can’t get from the air into the lungs, into the bloodstream, the body starts to breathe heavier which then causes the circulation system to struggle.
If you suspect your pet has pneumonia you’ll witness your dog vomit or regurgitate once, maybe a couple of times and have trouble breathing. They’ll take deep breaths and have an exaggerated breathing pattern.
For patients who have been at the beach swimming to catch a ball, saltwater is going into their lungs as their mouths are open. We’ve seen quite a few cases of that. We know that salt, draws water with it. So if your furry friend gets any amount of saltwater in their lungs, water will be drawn in there as will bacteria from the saltwater.
Diagnosis
The best way to diagnose pneumonia is with chest x-rays or with an ultrasound of the chest. That’s quite good at identifying patches of pneumonia in the lung for the more severe cases we’ll perform CT scans on the lungs to identify the seriousness of the case. Pneumonia can be managed; however, a lot of these patients can be critical. After a few scans, your furry friend will need to stay in hospital for a couple of days on support, antibiotics and oxygen.
So what do we do about patients that have developed pneumonia?
Treatment Options
After diagnosis, the first thing is to start a course of antibiotics. More often than not there’s a bacterial component, that’s why it’s called pneumonia. It involves infection more than just inflammation. Since these patients are having trouble breathing, we’ll use a machine called a pulse oximeter to measure the amount of oxygen in their bloodstream. If the amount of oxygen is low or lower than what we would like or what we would expect, we’ll put them onto oxygen support. This involves putting small nasal prongs in the nose and putting them onto an oxygen line.
This allows more oxygen to cross into their bloodstream. Sometimes patients with pneumonia need to be on oxygen for a period of 24, 48, sometimes up to 72 hours, depending on how bad their condition is. Some patients will respond quite quickly and quite well to the oxygen while others take a little longer. The majority of patients will need to be in hospital for a period of time. We usually also support our patients with fluids when they have pneumonia and try and put them on intravenous antibiotics.
The best-case scenario is that patients that are on nasal oxygen respond quite well and need a little bit of support, some fluids and some antibiotics.
You’ve probably heard of the worst-case scenario. Patients that really struggle to breathe need to be put on a ventilator or artificial respirator. It’s something that we do have access to, but we try and minimise its use because we know that patients with pneumonia have damaged lungs already.
At North Coast Vet we’ve recently purchased a high flow nasal oxygen machine, which is very exciting for our patients of the future. Now we have access to something that’s slightly better than just nasal oxygen and not as intensive as ventilation. High flow nasal oxygen supplies the patient with warm humidified oxygen that’s at a higher flow rate. So more oxygen will enter the bloodstream, through the lungs, even though the lungs are damaged.
If your dog is diagnosed with pneumonia and then discharged home after they’ve had a couple of days in hospital, keep them in a quiet space. Treat them as if you would be treating yourself if you had a lung infection. It can take like four to six weeks to recover. Although they’ll feel a lot better, don’t take them for runs because they’ll get tired easily and it’s not in their best interest.
If you’re ever worried about your pet’s breathing or breathing pattern, take them to a veterinary clinic immediately or to an emergency centre. At North Coast Veterinary Emergency, we’re here 24 hours a day, seven days a week – call us today to see how we can help you.
